Luanluan

Luanluan

Luanluan the term suggests a more playful action than the straightforward luan (to ride, to get aboard). When a Cebuano word is doubled (there must be a specific grammatical term for this), the new word is either not a real thing (balay-balay, tawo-tawo) or itself an even more playful or enjoyable action (kaon-kaon, dula-dula) than the original. In that second example, luan-luan would be like sakay-sakay. Luan or sakay both means to ride, but luan-luan or sakay-sakay sounds more like an inviting joyride.

On the side of the San Jose chapel is the reported year it was founded — 1883. Since the placename Luanluan existed much earlier than 1883, does this date possibly signal when sitio chapels were allowed by the parish? But then, we might wonder: why would the Carcar parish priest allow a chapel to be set up at a site very near the parish church for people to worship there when the church itself is quite nearby – all this assuming that where the present chapel stands is the original site. Too near, right?

Were chapels only a later development? Some as yet unconfirmed accounts relate the earliest San Jose devotion was house-to-house sort of like the present block rosary and there may have been no fixed chapel to house an icon yet. And this manner of devotion may hold true for most of the early chapel organizations of the town—a family chapel and the icon just rotated from house to house among the willing devotee neighbors.

Well. But when they decided to build the first chapel, could it have been at a site a little farther away than this one? Are there older more knowledgeable historians who could tell us the story? Because there must be a story to be found behind all this.

If so – that the original site of the chapel was farther away — it would tie in nicely with a theory, just a theory, that the area of the circumferential Padre Vasquez-San Jose-Florencio Noel-General Luna belonged to Latid, or was part of the Latid nameplace. And thus, the Luanluan area would be a little farther, probably towards the river – since the river is obviously the reason for the name.